Marriage Seasons 01 - It Happens Every Spring (27 page)

"And I have the proposal here for you to look over," Jackie
Patterson was saying. "The lawyers spent a great deal of time on it,
and this is really the best night for me, Steve. I simply have to be
back in St. Louis by noon tomorrow for a luncheon."

"All right," he told her. "Can you give me a few minutes? I need
to take care of a couple of things first."

"I guess I'll nurse my drink and hope I see someone I recognize."

"I'm sure you will." Steve said his good-bye and put away his
phone.

He studied the huddled shape on the window seat, certain no
good could come of the impulse that had trickled into his brain as
his real-estate client chattered away. It wasn't smart. It was a bad
business move. It might cause him to lose everything he had been
hoping for and dreaming of all these months.

But each time he tried to make himself stand, ignore his wife,
and walk to the bathroom, he saw his daughter's earnest face. For
so many weeks, Steve had hoped for some solution to Brenda's
problem. He'd prayed for it. Nothing he had done made any difference. So maybe it was time for drastic measures.

"Brenda," he said, rising, "I want you to put on a dress and
brush your hair while I change into a clean shirt and tie."

Bleary-eyed, she turned to him. Her nose was red, and her hands
trembled. "What?" she whispered.

"Get dressed," he repeated. "We're going to have dinner at the
country club with one of my clients. And I won't take no for an
answer.

Brenda followed two paces behind Steve as they entered the
dimly lit dining room at the country club. A dark green, richly patterned carpet covered the floor all the way to the cherry-paneled
walls hung with gold-framed copies of vintage golf, hunting, and
boating prints. The tables, each covered in a round green cloth
topped by a square white one, held small candle lamps and elegantly folded napkins. The service staff wore various versions of
tuxedos-black jackets, white shirts, bow ties, and black slacks.
Some of the serving girls had on skirts and low heels. A mounted
deer head with an impressive set of antlers peered out from one
end of the room. An elk head gazed impassively from the opposite
wall.

Brenda had visited the club many times. Usually it was to take
the kids swimming with friends in the Olympic-sized pool or to
have lunch in the cafe with a group of local families after church on
Sundays. She could count on one hand the number of evenings she
had spent in the formal dining room. That had become Steve's
domain.

Getting dressed and applying makeup tonight had been the
hardest job Brenda could remember in years. She had begged to be
left alone in the house. Steve wouldn't hear of it. He took her by the
arms, lifted her off the window seat, and propelled her to the closet.

Feeling as though twenty-pound weights were attached to her
wrists and ankles, she had managed to pull a dress from its hanger
and onto her body. In the midst of toweling off after a two-minute
shower, Steve zipped up Brenda's dress and tossed a pair of her
sandals out of the closet. She stepped into them before he led her
into the bathroom and put a tube of mascara in her hand.

As Steve drove them to the club, Brenda stared blankly out the
window. Her thoughts went around and around, and she began to
feel that someone was stirring her brains like a bowl of brownie
batter. Steve is my husband, the refrain went. I don't love him. He
doesn't love me. I can't divorce him. I don't want to leave him. But I
can't live with him. I love Nick. I don't know Nick, so I can't possibly
love him. I would be miserable with Nick. But Nick cares about me. I
betrayed Steve. God hates me. I hate God. I hate Nick. I hate Steve.
I hate myself Over and over, the whispered words ran circles
through her mind, until the car pulled into the parking lot of the
club.

Now Steve was waving to a woman who sat near a window that
looked out onto Lake of the Ozarks. In a daze, Brenda stepped up
to the table. The woman, a frosted blonde in her early sixties, held
out a hand tipped with manicured nails. She wore a designer suit in
coral knit, two ropes of pearls at her neck, and a bracelet watch
covered with diamonds. Her smile of perfectly veneered teeth was
polite but hardly warm.

"My goodness, Steve!" she exclaimed as she shook Brenda's
hand. "This is an unexpected surprise. How nice to meet you, dear.
Mrs. Hansen, I want to tell you that your husband treats me like a
queen. I wouldn't work with any other real-estate agent at the lake.
You must be so proud of him."

"Yes," Brenda mouthed.

As they seated themselves, a server emerged from the shadows.
It was Ashley Hanes. She handed out menus and recited the specials for the evening. And then she focused on her customers.

"Mrs. Hansen!" she gasped. "What are you doing here? I mean
... wow, are you all right?"

"Brenda's not feeling too well tonight," Steve spoke up. "Do you
have any hot tea?"

"Sure. I'll bring some right out."

Embarrassed, yet at the same time oddly apathetic, Brenda
leaned back in her chair while Steve and Jackie Patterson chatted.
Jackie, as it turned out, was not after Steve's heart. Brenda saw that
at once. The woman had been dating some man in St. Louis whom
she mentioned as regularly as if they were married. And she certainly wasn't flirting now-a demeanor Brenda had learned to
recognize in about fourth grade.

But Jackie Patterson was on a mission. She spoke with great animation and fervor, punctuating her speech with a firm tap on the
back of Steve's hand or an index finger jabbing the table. Brenda
found it difficult to listen to the woman. Instead she thought about
Cody and how he would wake up on the porch swing and wonder
where she had gone. She thought about Nick, his single-wide
trailer, his son Leland, and his meth-making wife.

"Nelda had some problems, and so did I,"Nick had told Brenda.
"We got to where we couldn't work things out." She wondered about
those words as she stirred milk and sugar into the tea Ashley had
poured. What had been Nick's problems? Ashley once hinted that
Nick had "popped" his wife. Could that be true? Was there a violent man hiding behind the kind words and gentle craftsmanship
that Brenda had believed characterized Nick?

She recalled the strength with which he had pulled her into his
arms. And the way he had faced off with Cody. And then she
remembered how his fingers had clamped onto her arm after she'd
paid him and asked him to go. Nick had refused to leave the house.
He told her he wouldn't go without her. He insisted that she wanted him as much as he wanted her, and then he shook her
when she denied him. He shook her... and it hurt ... so maybe he
was the kind of man who would "pop" his wife.

"I'm going to the restroom," Brenda said, suddenly realizing she
felt sick to her stomach. "Excuse me."

She grabbed her purse and made it to the ladies' room without
stumbling over her own feet or tripping on a chair leg. Feeling ill
and stupid and hopeless, she pulled the stall door shut and sat
down on the closed lid of a toilet. She put her head in her hands
and stared down at the tile pattern swimming dizzily on the floor.

Where could she go to escape everything? How could she fix
this? How could any of it be made right? The tears started again,
and she could think of no way to make them stop.

"Hey, Mrs. Hansen?" Ashley's voice echoed in the bathroom.
"Are you in here? Steve's worried about you."

"I'm fine." Brenda pressed her damp, swollen eyelids shut with
her fingers. "I'll be out in a minute."

"You look really awful," Ashley said. "I can't believe Steve
brought you here tonight. You ought to be in bed, and he should
have stayed home with you. You need some chicken soup, not dinner at the club. For pete's sake, men are so stupid sometimes."

"I guess he wanted me to come," Brenda said, wiping her eyes
with toilet paper. Swallowing at the lump in her throat, she stood,
smoothed down her dress, and stepped out of the stall.

Ashley's face registered shock. "You've got mascara all over your
cheeks!" she exclaimed. "You've been crying. Oh, my word. We've
got to get you cleaned up and taken home."

"No, I ... I have to be here."

"For what? Jacqueline Patterson? All that woman cares about is
pushing Steve into joining her big scheme."

"What?" Brenda muttered. "What scheme?"

"She's got more money than you can shake a stick at, and she
wants to buy up a bunch of lake property and get Steve to manage it for her. He doesn't have time for that, not with his agency doing
fine as it is."

Brenda stared at Ashley, trying to comprehend the younger
woman's words. "Steve is in trouble?" she asked.

Ashley pursed her lips together. Then she leaned over near
Brenda's ear and spoke in a low voice. "Well, let's just say Mrs.
Patterson has been coming to the country club for years, even
while her husband was around and their kids were younger, and
she always treated the serving staff like the scum at the bottom of
the bucket. She's not friendly the way lake people usually are. Sure,
it might be all right for Steve to buy a rental house or two, but not if
it means getting tangled in that woman's scheme."

For the first time in days ... maybe weeks ... Brenda suddenly
saw a view of the world outside herself. And what she saw was Steve
Hansen. She saw two things about Steve: First, she had long ago
stopped feeling proud and supportive of a man others admired.
And second, if he wasn't careful, Steve might become involved in
something dangerous. Something that might cost both of them a
great deal of money, effort, energy ... and time. More time than
ever.

"Here, we'll have to use soap," Ashley said, dabbing at Brenda's
cheeks with a wet paper towel. "You really are a mess. I'm sorry to
keep saying it, but I've never seen you look like this. Are you sick,
or what?"

Brenda followed the flickering brown eyes of the younger
woman, who was doing her best to sponge away smudged mascara
and streaked blush. How could Brenda explain something she
didn't really understand herself? Could she admit that she had
willingly let a man other than Steve hold her? that she had wanted
to kiss him? that she had dreamed of abandoning her husband,
home, church, even her children's respect, to have an affair with a
handyman she barely knew? She might have done it. All of it. If
Cody hadn't pushed open the basement door, she might have let
every moral restraint snap.

"I heard that homeless guy is back," Ashley said as she lined
Brenda's mouth with a stick of lip gloss she had pulled from her
apron pocket. "Is he the one who's got you so upset?"

"No, but ... I don't know what to do with him."

"Well, he's not worth crying about. Take him over to the police
station and let them figure it out. Or drop him off on Highway 54
in Osage Beach. It'll take him the rest of the summer to find you
again."

"I couldn't do that."

Ashley stood back and eyed Brenda. "You still don't look very
good, but I have to get back to my tables."

"Thank you for trying, Ashley."

The young woman fiddled with the stack of black bead necklaces that took the place of her tuxedo tie. Evidently Ashley had
been working at the club long enough to break from the dress
code.

"You and I are in the club that Mrs. Moore started at Just As I
Am," Ashley reminded Brenda. "The Tea Ladies' Club. That
means you still owe Brad a job building a bridge over your ditch,
and I still owe you and Steve dinner. But the main point of the club
is to help each other out, right? So here's the best way I know to
help you tonight, Mrs. Hansen. Go out there and tell your husband
to take you home now."

"Call me Brenda, remember?"

"Brenda. Okay. Listen, my buzzer's gone off three times while
I've been in here with you. I'd better run."

Brenda reached out and touched Ashley's arm. "Thank you,"
she said. "You've helped me a lot."

A crooked grin brightened Ashley's face. "Really? Cool! Okay,
see you, Brenda. And don't forget about that bridge."

As Ashley hurried out of the bathroom, Brenda turned to gaze at
herself in the mirror. She really did look awful. Just the thing to
convince Steve to take her straight home.